1. Field of The Invention
The present invention relates to computer system maintenance and diagnostics, and more particularly, to interfacing between controlling software and controlled diagnostic test routines.
2. State of The Art
Much of the world's day-to-day business relies on sophisticated computer systems used in such fields as finance, securities exchange, telecommunications, medicine and retailing. Reliability and maintainability are vital concerns in such applications, since any down time may result not only in tremendous inconvenience but also significant monetary loss. Vendors of such computer systems have, therefore, developed maintenance and diagnostic facilities as part of the computer system. When a system failure occurs, diagnostic software tries to determine the cause of the failure. Diagnostic testing routines specific to various computer subsystems are called by a diagnostic controller in an effort to determine the cause of the failure.
Diagnostics by their very nature are hardware specific. In a known computer diagnostic system, the interface between the diagnostic controller and the diagnostics is defined in a hardware-specific manner using traps. Such a solution is appropriate for a single specific hardware environment, but is not portable to other hardware environments without significant code rework. What is needed, then, is a standard platform interface between the diagnostics and the controlling software, allowing the diagnostics and controlling software to be migrated to various hardware platforms with a minimum of code rework.